Exchanging

Modelling platform

The project’s modelling tools and activities will be documented in the open-access I2AM PARIS platform.

As a vessel to coordinate its climate-economy modelling activities, IAM COMPACT will further enhance and exploit the access I2AM PARIS platform. I2AM PARIS is an open access, data exchange modelling platform developed in the context of the LC-CLA-01-2018 PARIS REINFORCE project (also coordinated by NTUA). Much like IAM COMPACT, the platform is sustained by other H2020 (NDC ASPECTS and ENCLUDE) and Horizon Europe (DIAMOND) projects. It is intended as a vessel for documenting integrated assessment, energy system, and sectoral modelling capabilities, inputs, and outputs, so that modelling exercises and their outcomes are made fully and transparently accessible to the research community, the policy world, and all other interested parties and stakeholders.

The platform comprises two interfaces, a public one for displaying open data (including model capabilities, modelling assumptions, and insights emerging from modelling activities) and a scientific one for enabling and facilitating knowledge and data exchange among modelling teams.

I2AM PARIS is broken down into two components: ‘Documentation’ and ‘Results’.

Documentation is further broken down into:

  • The ‘Detailed Documentation’ component, which includes a detailed presentation of modelling tools acting at different scales and from different perspectives, in a non-expert-friendly language, but encompassing high technical detail. This component mainly targets more experienced users (e.g., modellers, other researchers/scientists) but is comprehensible for all audiences, including policymakers, displaying information of what research questions a model has been in the past used to address, and what findings/insights it produced.
  • The ‘Dynamic Documentation’ component, which is an interactive library of the documented models, in the form of a responsive “infographic”, including geographical coverage as well as sector, emission, policy, socioeconomic and mitigation/adaptation measure granularities. This component mainly targets non-experts and is motivated by the need to concisely inform policymakers and other decision makers (from business to NGOs and civil society) on what models can and cannot do, in a visually appealing way.
  • The ‘Comparative Assessment’ component, which essentially draws comparisons between different models of a specific modelling exercise (e.g., an inter-comparison project, such as IAM COMPACT) in the form of tables and discussion. It is intended to provide all users with a grasp of why different models are needed to answer a specific question, and allow them to comprehend modelling capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses across a modelling ensemble.

The ‘Results’ component is a dynamic representation of data deriving from modelling exercises, including meaningful visualisations and user-friendly interfaces that allow the users to examine the results of different scenarios by altering specific parameters on the interface. It comprises workspaces of multi-model analyses that are further broken down into four blocks:

  • The ‘Advanced Scientific Interface’, which visualises and provides access to highly technical results (in extractable, configurable datasets), aimed primarily at scientists (e.g., energy system and integrated assessment modelling teams).
  • The ‘Public Interface’, which provides a step-by-step discussion of the scope, methods, and policy questions of the analysis in a non-expert user-friendly manner, aimed at all stakeholder groups (including policymakers, industries, NGOs, citizens).
  • The ‘Variable Harmonisation Heatmap’, which showcases how models are interlinked, what input assumptions have been made, and to what extent these assumptions have been harmonised across models. It also provides access to the input data.
  • The ‘Virtual Library’, which stocktakes all scientific publications, conferences, commentaries and policy briefs, databases, Zenodo repository libraries, and project deliverables associated with the workspace.